3 Traits of a Great CEO

Organized

If you have ever been in the cockpit of an airplane, you know that the many tools a pilot needs are clearly and meticulously arranged. The speedometer, altimeter, and GPS are right in front of him, exactly where they need to be. A pilot knows precisely what he has to do and when he has to do it. If things ever go awry, he can rely on this system of organization.  A CEO, as the “pilot” of his company, needs the employ the same system of organization. If your instruments (financial statements, marketing reports, etc,) are missing or miscalculated, you can’t make the right decisions. In addition, your time, your most precious resource, should be spent on the important stuff, especially when it is getting hectic.  When things inevitably go wrong, you can trust that your system of organization will help you solve the problem.

“CEOs too, like great generals, need to inspire their “troops.””

Walks the Walk, Talks the Talk

One of the reasons George Washington was so revered by his soldiers was because he would fearless lead them into battle. Unlike other generals, he was on the front lines, leading the charge. CEOs too, like great generals, need to inspire their “troops.” They need to model the work ethic, attitude, and passion they hope to see in their employees. If the boss demands his workers should be responsible and diligent, he needs to model that behavior. Nothing inspires people like seeing their leader working just as hard, if not harder, than them. Not only will this yield inspiration, but respect as well. When your employees see how invested you are in the enterprise’s success, they will undoubtedly gain respect for you. When you actually “walk the walk” you become a much more effective leader.

Responds Well to Criticism

As many CEOs know too well, you can never be perfect. You constantly have to make decisions and any decision you make will inevitably be criticized. A big mistake is never listening to complaints and detractions. Too often, we take criticism to personally. John Wooden, the legendary college basketball coach, taught that “You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one“ The best CEOs listen to their detractors and reanalyze their decisions. You should not bend to the will of anyone, but instead realize you are not infallible. Take criticism, especially constructive criticism, as an opportunity to better yourself and the decisions you make. This way, you will constantly grow and improve.

How I Started a Dog Walking Business Turned Tech Company

Nobody understands what it’s like to have your hands so full of dogs, that you don’t even have time to change your pants after a dog lifted his leg on you at the dog park. Or what it’s like to spend time with so many happy dogs all day, but to come home exhausted and covered in dog hair and slobber. It’s a labor of love and it can be the hardest and the best job ever.

You might have fallen into dog walking like I did. I have always loved dogs and I’ve always loved people too. When I was at UCSD, I missed my dogs back home so much that I decided to help out my neighbors with their dogs. Before I knew it, I was walking dogs on almost every street in La Jolla. By the time I graduated, I was walking 30 dogs per day and that’s when I decided to turn DogZenergy into a professional business.

My goal:

To create the best and biggest dog walking agency in San Diego so that I could spread my love to hundreds of dogs.

My biggest hurdle:

Fear and burnout.

In the first few years of running my business, I was happy, but tired. After walking all day from 7am-8pm without any breaks, it was exhausting to come home and do the busy work. The last thing I wanted to do was work on the schedule, create invoices, and get back to customer requests. I felt like I was stuck on a hamster wheel of the daily grind.

One day, one of my favorite clients was extremely upset when I handed her a late invoice. She said to me, “Brittany, you are not a businesswoman, you are a dog walker.” These words really stung. I put my whole life into being the best dog walker that I could be, but it was true. I was not running a streamlined business. I was behind on invoicing, I had no systems in place, and I had no help. I felt like I was drowning. A friend of mine told me to read The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber and this book really changed my life. In the book, Gerber explains that you have to work “on” your business and not just “in” it. You can’t just be a dog walker, you have to be a mindful business owner too. You need systems and processes so that you can hire a team and bring on more customers without compromising your quality of service.  

It sounded easy enough, I needed to build a team. But how do I trust them? How do I know that every dog got walked and no mistakes were made? How do I not get cut out? That’s when I started searching for the perfect software, but couldn’t find it. When Uber and other on-demand apps came out, I really wanted to get my hands on the same technology for my business. So I decided to pack the last ten years of trying to make my life easier into one easy, simple to use mobile business platform called Handlr.

With the Handlr business dashboard and connected team app and customer app, you can seamlessly handle the following:

• Automate scheduling and dispatching of your dog walkers

• Keep track of your client list. See revenue and satisfaction ratings per client.

• Keep track of your dog walkers’ performance ratings

• Receive check in and check out alerts and GPS track your walkers

• Three-way chat between you, your dog walker and your client so that phone numbers are not shared.

• You and your clients can see photos and updates about their dog’s day and share them on social media.

• Easy client registration and safe, encrypted, credit card payment

• No more invoicing. Get paid right away.

• Always know how your business is performing with revenue reports.

• See new customers magically drop themselves into your schedule.

Now my business is running completely on auto-pilot and we have 15 dog walkers and hundreds of clients using the Handlr app. Our clients are booking our services on the app 20% more than they did before and we are growing faster than we can hire. We’re on track to do a million dollars in sales this year. And now you can gain control over your business by using Handlr too.

If you’re interested in applying to join Handlr click here.

We look forward to handling business with you!

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Britt Alwerud lives in Los Angeles, CA with her menagerie of animals - two goldens, Daisy and Taj, two cats, Tiger and Monkey, and two horses named Gracie and Moo. Britt owns DogZenergy in San Diego, CA. Now she is the full-time Founder and CEO of Handlr. Learn more at myhandlr.com/petprofessionals or email her at britt@myhandlr.com.

Are you a fearless entrepreneur? Here's 3 tactics for overcoming fear.

Britt Alwerud

A few weeks ago I sat in an audience of 40 other business CEOs and founders and listened to Mike Jones of Science, Inc. say the words, “Are you doing something right now that makes you money?”. This quote ended up on my whiteboard as a constant reminder to stay on track and work on tasks that make me money instead of make me busy. Which is ironic, because right now I’m writing a blog post instead of calling a hundred small businesses to spread the word about Handlr. The truth is, starting a business is completely overwhelming. It’s like staring up at a massive mountain and thinking, “How the hell am I going to scale this thing?”. The answer? One step at a time. Mike shared with us that success rides on two basic principles: sales and an unfaltering belief in your business’ potential for growth.

The bottom line is that fear is the enemy when it comes to sales and believing in your success. It’s scary as all hell to cold call people or to walk up to strangers with your card in hand. It's nerve-wracking to put your idea out into the world. It’s scary to hear the truth and the truth is, not everyone is going to love your idea. It’s scary to put your whole life savings (and wedding fund if you're like me) into a new crazy idea and it’s scary to think that there’s a possibility that not a single soul will want to sign up for your new app. Fear is a bitch. It can paralyze you and make you want to crawl up into a ball.

Owning my own business for the last 9 years and starting a new one, has been quite the roller coaster. It’s the best feeling in the world to be financially independent and to grow something from nothing, but it’s also scary to see your bank account near zero and to have so many employees relying on you to pay their living wages. It’s sometimes terrifying to shoulder so much responsibility for your business, your employees, your business’ reputation and your own living expenses. But it’s so worth it and the last 9 years have taught me so many lessons in bitch slapping fear in the face. I’m not going to lie, I have moments of panic, every entrepreneur does, but I now know how to stand up to my fear and most importantly, I know how to change my mindset.

The only thing that we have control over in life is our own mind. We have the power to choose the way we want to think about things. Dog training has taught me to train my own brain. I can train myself to approach difficult matters confidently, objectively, logically and without fear (ok, most of the time). Today we aren’t running from saber tooth tigers or wolves to survive, but we are still experiencing varying degrees of stress to make it in the modern world. You can think about stress as something negative, or you can change your mind about it and think of it as a motivator to keep you moving forward. Some stress is good, it keeps you going. It’s just important to keep it in check and not become paralyzed by it. I’ve found that 1) perspective, 2) progress, and 3) balance, keeps stress in check and fear at bay.

#1 Perspective in life is everything. It’s really the only thing that we truly have control over in life.  You can choose to think about things any way that you want. You choose to be scared, unknowledgeable, ungrateful, panicked, or clueless, or you can choose to be confident, knowledgeable, grateful, poised and clued in. You can be these things by taking action and taking control of your thoughts. To do this you must be self-aware and reflective in order to make a conscious effort to cancel out the negative and change it to a positive. Being scared or panicked is caused by a stressful response based on something that happened to you in the past or because of staring at the unknown future. Being in the present moment and taking one tiny step at a time toward your goal is really all that you can do and is completely do-able. You can look at a giant mountain that needs to be climbed, or you can look at your own two feet and put one ahead of the other. This perspective will propel you forward instead of become stuck in a quagmire of fear. Being grateful for being on your own two feet and being thankful to be on your personal journey of learning and growing will keep your perspective healthy and manageable. Like the old saying goes, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” Where you think you’re going to end up isn’t always the case and worrying about the future just slows progress.

#2 Progress is another key to keeping fear in check. Checking off little goals and tasks gets you one step further on your hike to the top. Everyone starts somewhere and overnight success is a rarity, not the norm. I have a tendency to look at the big picture and end goal way too often and fear sets in. Changing my perspective to what I can do today, keeps the fear in check. I have to remind myself that DogZenergy started as Wagz n’ Wigglz on my street with just a handful of dogs and that it took a few years to walk a dog on every single street in all of La Jolla and greater San Diego. We all start somewhere and progress is made when we keep on moving.

#3 Keeping life in balance is an art form and is the key to staying calm, brave and laser focused. Even though I can’t juggle, I have an imaginary Brittany in my head who is a fantastic juggler. She juggles a lot of balls. There’s one for my family, friends, Handlr, DogZenergy, pets, fitness, fun, health, mindfulness and learning. I am happiest and most brave when all of these balls are up in the air. If I drop one, a few others start dropping and then I’ve lost all my balls and marbles. Luckily I have ball obsessed golden retrievers who help me pick up my metaphorical balls. This is sounding weird and somewhat dirty. Getting back on track here… it’s tricky to keep your life in balance, but especially as an entrepreneur, it’s essential to take care of yourself to be the best version of yourself. You are your business and your business needs you. You don’t have time to be worrying and fretting about the future or whether or not things are going to turn out the way that you want them to. You just need to keep it all in perspective, make progress and stay balanced.

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“Fear can only grow in darkness. Once you face fear with light, you win.” -Steve Maraboli”